Legacy (18 page)

"If the period is so obscure," Tiraena inquired, "how did you even know where to start?"

"We started with one of the best sources of hard information we have: an individual named Sidonius Apollinaris. He belongs to the last generation of Romanized aristocrats in Gaul, and he is considered one of the leading literary lights of the age—which, I'm afraid, is a comment on the age. He is also an amazingly prolific letter-writer."

Sarnac shook his head. "I can't get used to the way you keep referring to this guy in the present tense."

"Why should I not? He is very much alive, even as we approach Sol. To continue, Sidonius has documented
himself
so thoroughly that he was easy to locate. I approached him last year in Rome, where he was serving as City Prefect. Last year for
him
, that is; it was a number of subjective years ago for me, during which years, I've spent a small part of my time serving as his secretary in the course of a number of brief trips to this era. In fact, my visits haven't all been in chronological order from my own standpoint."

Sarnac's head was starting to spin. "Doesn't it get confusing?"

"Well," Tylar allowed, "it does call for a certain presence of mind."

"And what if you, uh, run into yourself?"

For the first time in their acquaintance, Tylar sounded miffed. "My dear fellow, we like to flatter ourselves that we know what we're doing! And," he added in a milder tone, "it's really not as confusing as it sounds in English, which lacks several of the requisite tenses for discussing time travel. At any rate, we're moving the focus of our operation to this point in time because matters are coming to a head."

"Why? What's happening?"

"The Western Empire's final loss of Gaul to the barbarians has now commenced. A last effort is being made to stop it—an effort which, because it fails, will become a mere footnote to history. But we believe that it represents the last instance when the course of events
might
have been reversed. Afterwards . . . well, the official end of the Western Empire seven years from now will be a mere formality."

"What kind of effort? I mean, if the Western Empire is so far gone . . . ?"

"Two generations ago, the islanders of Britain were abandoned by the Empire. Since then, they've managed to contain their local barbarian invaders and to establish a kingdom which includes Brittany—still officially 'Armorica.' This has necessitated involvement in Gallic affairs, and now the British High King has allied himself with the Western Empire and brought an army to Gaul. Fortuitously, Sidonius has corresponded with the High King—actually, Sidonius corresponds with
everybody
! And his term as City Prefect is up, so he's returned to Gaul. So it was easy to influence him to attach himself to the Imperial deputation that recently met the arriving British. The next step, after we arrive on Earth, will be to persuade him to attach me to the High King's entourage as a liaison—in which capacity," he addressed Sarnac briskly, "I will, of course, need a bodyguard! We should have no trouble manufacturing an appropriate identity for you. . . ."

"What about me?" Tiraena asked. "This sounds like a rough era, so you ought to be able to justify a need for two bodyguards."

"Ah . . . I'm afraid we must find some other role for you, as that one would not be altogether suitable in the current milieu."

"Why?" Tiraena inquired with a look of genuine puzzlement.

Tylar's embarrassment became almost comical. "Oh, my! This may take a certain amount of explaining. In fact, I may leave that to specialists. Yes, I believe that's an excellent idea! For the present, why don't I show you to your quarters?" He gestured at the elegant villa that could be glimpsed beyond the trees. "You must be exhausted after your experiences. After you rest, we can set to work in earnest." He ushered them from the pavilion and along the footpath.

"Did we agree?" Tiraena whispered as they walked through the intricate landscaping. "I suppose we must have."

"I suppose so," Sarnac agreed dubiously.

It was Earth's night side that brought home to Sarnac that he was in the distant past.

They had approached his birthworld from the day side, and the cloud-swirling blue loveliness that he had seen (would see?) so many times in his own era had made him homesick. But then the ship had curved around, descending over Europe, and the poignant warmth that he'd felt was blighted by chill.

For it was
dark
. The dazzling illumination that bejewelled the nights of his Earth was nowhere to be seen in this unrelieved blackness. The blazing galaxies of the great conurbations, the stars of lesser metropoli, the strings of light that marked the maglev routes—all had vanished without trace into a Stygian well. And all at once he
knew
that this was an Earth before electricity. Before internal combustion. Before interchangeable parts. Before steam. Before printing. Before gunpowder. Before windmills.

The reality of it finally hit him, leaving him shaken.

Of course, the observation deck—you couldn't call it a "bridge," for all piloting and navigational functions were taken care of by a small part of the ship's complex artificial intelligence—was no place to feel shaken. Sarnac was still having to fight off vertigo in the featureless little chamber that produced, at the touch of Tylar's thoughts, an all-around, holographic exterior view, as if the ship did not exist.

Tylar followed Sarnac's eyes downward, toward the blackness where the nighttime glow of Paris, London and the Rhineland should have been, and seemed to read his thoughts. "You'd find it less strange in the daytime—at least in this part of the world. If we were over China, you wouldn't be able to make out the Great Wall. It was begun by Shih Huang-Ti almost seven centuries ago, but it won't be completed in its final form until the Ming Dynasty. Now, it's just an earthwork."

Sarnac gazed at Tylar, standing in space and silhouetted against the stars, wearing clerkly fifth century garb of a rather coarse fabric, but far from poorly made. It was one of the two or three outfits that were all Sidonius' secretary owned or expected to own, all these centuries before the Textile Revolution and house designs that included closets. He was considerably better-dressed than Sarnac, whose buskins and tunic of what seemed to be quilted cloth were serviceable, and little else. But Sarnac was more than willing to forego a reputation as a fifth century dandy, in exchange for the outfit's other qualities.

Tiraena hadn't been too surprised when Tylar explained the network of tiny sensors that detected any incoming object whose kinetic energy threatened harm. The material would stiffen into a hardness exceeding steel at the instant of impact. The Raehaniv had produced similar armor experimentally—still enormously expensive, and there was no disguising what it was—so it hadn't caused her to quote Narliel's Law. Neither had the minute device that had been painlessly implanted in Sarnac's head. Raehaniv neural-interface implants would accept data storage discs that provided instant access to skills and areas of knowledge. But these were mere built-in reference books, no substitute for practice and experience. Tylar's people had advanced further. Sarnac could now ride a horse and wield a
spatha
with the trained reflexes of an experienced soldier of fortune. He could speak, like a native, the Celtic language that had not yet differentiated into Welsh and Breton, and he had a working knowledge of military Latin.

Thinking of it made him recall the conversation he had had with Tylar after the brief operation, sitting on a couch that had extruded itself from the floor of the little . . . infirmary, he supposed he must call it.

"Tylar, is this permanent?" he had asked, examining the area behind his ear in vain for any trace of the intruder. "I mean, when I get back to my era. . . ."

"Not at all," the time traveller had assured him. "After a certain amount of time, the device will biodegrade tracelessly in your body. And now," he had continued briskly, "as to the details of your synthetic persona. You are the son of a British emigrant to Armorica and a local woman of mixed Gallic and Roman blood. Your personal appearance is not incompatible with such a background. Your parents died in your early adolescence. For the last few years you have been soldiering in the Eastern Empire." Sarnac found that he "remembered" a tavern in Constantinople's harbor district near the Golden Horn . . . blows exchanged with a Hun, whose people were still raiding occasionally though they no longer had the great Attila to lead them . . . a mountain hut and an Illyrian peasant girl. He dragged his mind back to Tylar's discourse. "Now you're working your way home, and have applied, through me, for employment with Sidonius."

"Do I have a name?" Sarnac had inquired dryly.

"Oh, let's make it . . . Bedwyr. It's as good a name as any. Your absence in the East should account for your not being
au courant
with the local gossip. Still, you should try to avoid contact with the Armorican British troops that have now joined Riothamus' army."

"Riothamus?"

"The British High King." Tylar had hesitated for the barest instant. "It's an honorific, by which he's generally known on the Gallic side of the channel. His personal name, which the Britons normally use, is Artorius."

Sarnac had frowned, for the name had a vague familiarity. But Tylar had hurried on. "I'm telling you this instead of having had it incorporated into your implanted knowledge because you're not
supposed
to know it in any depth. Remember, you're just back from the East, and, in any case, you're a simple sword-for-hire, in whom too much knowledge would seem suspicious. And now, let's go over some more details of your personal background. . . ."

Sarnac returned to the present as the ship descended still lower. He wasn't sure how he knew that it was doing so, on this moonless night, for the land below was still an undifferentiated blackness.

"Tylar, what do these people
do
after dark? Uh, besides the obvious, that is."

"Drink too much, for the most part. Of course, really self-destructive drinking won't become widespread until the nineteenth century, with the combination of distilling—a Renaissance invention—and the grain surplus produced by the Agricultural Revolution. But that's neither here nor there. Why don't we take a clearer look?" The holo display included a light-enhancing feature. The landscape below was mostly forest, but scattered farmsteads could be seen in the ghostly illumination.

"Well," Sarnac drawled, "I suppose drinking as much as possible of whatever they've got in this era is appropriate behavior for the simple mercenary I'm playing. . . ."

"Lucky you!" A door in the simulated panorama had appeared behind them, and Tiraena stepped through. Her expression was as thunderous as it had been since one of Tylar's subordinates had succeeded in getting across to her the status of women in this world. "At least you get to wear something that lets you move!" She was still adjusting to the floor-length gown and took an equally dim view of her tubular headdress, though Tylar had assured her it was a stroke of luck for them, concealing hair the shortness of which would have taken some explaining.

"Whine, whine, whine!" Sarnac grinned, rubbing his jaw. The bristly skin—what currently passed for clean-shaven—still itched. "Look on the bright side, Lucasta," he continued, using her cover name. "You'll probably be up to your ears in exciting court intrigue. And you'll be a lot higher on the social scale than a grunt like me."

"Ha! Just because I'm going to be living in some larger-than-average pigsty they call a palace, where I'll be married off like the rest of the sows. . . ."

"Now, now," Tylar chided gently. "The engagement is purely
pro forma
, as Koreel is well aware. And besides, you are getting the benefit of some implanted historical knowledge which was deemed unnecessary and inappropriate in Robert's case."

They had settled on a cover for her that would operate within this era's rigid limits on women's lives and also account for her exotic looks. She was to be a niece of Tylar—or Tertullian, as he called himself in this world—who was going to Britain for an arranged marriage with a distant cousin named Ventidius, a successful merchant with ties to the High King's court. There, she would be a lady-in-waiting to Riothamus' queen, thanks to the good offices of Ventidius—or Koreel, as he was called in his own time and world.

Tiraena also had received one of the minute implants. Tylar had been too tactful to speak of Raehaniv biotechnology's primitivism, and merely cited its incompatibility with his people's data storage media. But the information it endowed her with was quite different from Sarnac's. She now spoke Latin as a first language, but only a few heavily accented phrases of British. She also had acquired various social graces, and an in-depth academic knowledge of the period's history.

"Still . . ." she began, sounding dubious.

"Come on," Sarnac jollied her. "You'll be the toast of Riothamus' city—what did you say the capital is called?"

"Cadbury," Tiraena replied. "And it's more a fortress than a city. The Roman cities in Britain were never much more than glorified towns, and even those have been decaying for a century." To Tylar: "I'm still concerned about the Korvaasha you captured aboard that battlecruiser. Are you certain that they're secured? Their leader—the Interrogator, as he calls himself—is very dangerous."

"Have no fear on that score. They've been imprisoned in a pocket universe, access to which is controlled strictly from our side. Ah, I see we're about to land."

The three of them seemed to drift from the night sky, past the treetops, magically stopping a few meters above ground level.

"And now," Tylar continued, gesturing them toward a portal that had appeared, filled with blackness, "it's time to go." Sarnac cradled a Model 469 helmet under his left arm. The helmet was standard issue, except for the microscopic generator that reinforced the iron's molecular bonds whenever it was in physical contact with him. He and Tiraena hoisted the bags containing their possessions, and they stepped through the portal into Earth's night.